'This Week' Transcript: O'Donnell and Coons

COONS: I'm not sure it's good for Delaware or good for Delaware's
voters.

AMANPOUR: Do you, for your campaign?

COONS: Obviously, I went from being significantly down to
significantly up in the polls, so just from an outside-in view, it's a
positive in terms of my chances in the election. But I don't think it's
been positive for Delaware. There's been a huge amount of attention
paid to things that aren't directly connected to what matters to Delaware.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): And Tom Ross, chairman of the state
Republican Party, was clearly agitated when he joined me on "This Week"
just days after O'Donnell won the primary.

(on-screen): You are not a happy man today.

ROSS: I'm not a happy man. We have worked very diligently in a
very difficult environment. I'm the Republican chairman in the
Northeast. My state is vastly Democratic. Most people identify
themselves as a moderate. We had a candidate that was very close to
becoming the next United States senator from Delaware, and essentially
people on our own team clipped him right as he was about to go on the
goal line.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Ross told me O'Donnell's support comes from
Tea Party backers across the country.

ROSS: You know, we're not opposed to Tea Party values. What we're
opposed to is people coming in from out of state and dumping hundreds of
thousands of dollars on candidates that we have not endorsed.

AMANPOUR: O'Donnell may be trailing Coons in the polls, but she's
raised three times more money than he has, $3.8 million in just over a
month.

BIDEN: We want to make sure Chris has the money to continue -- to
finish out this campaign.

AMANPOUR: And as the vice president told "Nightline's" Terry Moran,
that got their attention.

BIDEN: Look, Christine ran against me. I'm the only guy in America
that at the same time ran -- had two opponents, Christine O'Donnell and
Sarah Palin, because I was on the ticket in Delaware as a senator and as
vice president. And I took them both very seriously. We take Christine
O'Donnell seriously.

One of the reasons is, Christine O'Donnell has been able to raise a
great deal of money. There's an awful lot of negative ads she's been
able to put up.

O'DONNELL: We haven't yet taken out a negative ad.

AMANPOUR: Expect, perhaps, this one...

(UNKNOWN): You will hide your lights, because he's taxing
everything out here. Chris Coons is the Taxman.

AMANPOUR: If he's elected, Chris Coons told me tax policy will be a
top priority.

COONS: I would vote to extend the overwhelming majority of the Bush
tax cuts. There's a trillion dollars in private capital sitting on the
sidelines right now in the American economy. All that money is sitting
there waiting for clear signals about health care costs, about where
we're going in tax policy, and what we're going to do to restart this
economy. We have to get these things solved.

O'DONNELL: There's this scare tactic coming from the Democrats
saying that these tax cuts for the rich are these billionaires who are
trying to find places to dock their yachts. That's not it at all. It's
the dry cleaner down the street. It's the pizza shop owner down the
street. It's the hardware store owner.

COONS: She's run for the -- for the United States Senate three
times in five years. That's a lot of persistence.